is the word my family does not say. Your car in the driveway. The driver’s door

open. One foot upon the pavement. Hands upon the wheel. Still life. This is how

you were posed. The last time I saw you, you asked for a book of poems, Rita Dove’s

Mother Love, I did not send it in time. I hope this will do.

***

BLUES MAMA

for Bessie Smith

Nip and tuck

that woebegone lip

as the pink flesh falls

slack

fueling the machine

of song.

Powerful lady

trace the sadness

tote it across the stage

called your life.

Loose yourself,

take ahold

this integrity called craft.

Lexicon of soul

lay it all down

make them know

what it feels like

to be

sprung.

Once they’re rapt

In your stirrin’

be still

don’t say

a mumbling word.

Gut-wrenching

rage

has no place

in such an earnest smile

but amidst your own

kind

there’s always a market for

a mean woman.

***

EQUANIMITY

Half-sleep, half-waked

my shutter eye clicks.

A room crowded with fringed lamps,

an antimacassared chair. A six-paneled door

grounded against thin vertical stripes.

Heavy oak dresser, a sepia-toned

lithograph of an actress. Delicate

white neck. Wicker chair

burdened with a mound of clothing.

African violets give birth

to a veritable jungle on the window ledge

as they drink polite sips of morning

light. The numbers turn slowly. Time

almost still. A rattan chest turned nightstand

holds a mason jar, filled with water, less

three small swallows. Damask and lace pillows.

Dust slanted blinds. Rows and rows

of books, most nursing cracked spines.

My breathing long as the mattress

is wide. The house settles and sighs.

The furnace’s white noise has worried

the mauve candle away to hard pink tears.

The swag of the valence forms an eye-

brow above a shaitan waterstain. We stare

at each other. Who will blink first?

I’m scared to shut my eyes. Blink

closed. Darkness transmogrifies into stone

ladies with pubic hair manicured

more neatly than the lawn. Blink open.

My hips are cradled like a motherless child

where the sagging double bed dips.

You must. I will

remember. I will remember.

I won’t forget. My breath.

This room, this calm.

***

STAY

I want to feel your daffodils.

A phrase escaped from a dream,

one eye shuts. Focus. I fumble the buttons

if the tape recorder on the floor

beside my bed. There are no other words.

But there is urgency. I must clasp

my mind around the stroke of each letter

before the emotion drifts

away. I want to feel your daffodils. I trip

free of the tub, mumbling like a lunatic.

My legs, my back.

A conniption of rivers

racing toward the floor. I find pen

but no paper. Then paper, but no ink.

Shake the pen. Curse whatever god

is handy. I want to feel

your daffodils. Each time, the words seem

like a present I don’t deserve.

More reason to believe

that this time is the last. I want

to feel your daffodils. This is what it means

to be a servant of breath.

***

TRANSFIGURATION

The berth of the distant road calls

slow your roll, but bald tires speed,

racing alongside outcroppings of wisteria,

one length behind a waxing, alabaster moon.

Pull aside, woman, pull aside.

Stopped. Body rigid, belly flat.

First she opens the car door, then

soaked linen, button by pearl button,

laying bare dew-drenched skin.

Visions of an icon, the Black Madonna.

Heat slathers over her extremities

like wax, a hot steam descends

stripping the irritating

vestiges of a dog-day drive.

Pull aside, woman, pull aside

the moist cotton between

your thighs. Sponge clean

your sacrifice to the night.

Rivulets of love roux run dry.

“I am the Black Madonna.”

She murmurs as mania leaps,

twirls between her shoulder blades.

Exhausted, she squats beneath a live oak.

With nature’s ink, she draws shadows

in the dust—a future that will never dry.

***

PUDDLEJUMPER: A.E. LINK FIELD

Beyond the oval blue

window—a bleak November.

Denuded ash trees

whisper a horizon.

Burnt matchsticks, a char of soldiers

tramping toward the vanishing point.

Surrender! they warn—shouting at the sky.

East

a defiant leap of green

between the airstrip and a concrete mind.

West

the quarter moon is talking

back to the sun.

Straight ahead is dappled

red, a harsh orange, yellow.

The air above is mottled

green, blue, a thin purple.

Everywhere

smudges pretend to be clouds.

***

I aver that I am Southern woman from Mississippi even though I am now an expat living in Singapore. When I go home for visits, I stock up on Camellia red beans, Tony Cachere seasoning, and grits. I’ve known I was a Southern every since I heard my Grand say, “That girl married for light-skin and “good” hair, now she’s trying to be surprised that her baby is stupid.”

A native of Mississippi, I completed a PhD at Binghamton University and an MA at Hollins University. My short story, “The Iron Bars,” won the 1999 Peregrine Prize. I have been a finalist for the May Swenson Award, the Journal Intro Award, the Naomi Long Madgett, the Gary Snyder Memorial Award, the Paumanok Award, as well as garnering nominations for Pushcarts. Currently, I am a Lecturer of Literature and Composition at the Center for American Education in Singapore.

-R. Flowers Rivera

All copyrights revert to author upon publication. All work is copyrighted. So do the right thing and don't copy.
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.
"No good Southern fiction is complete without a dead mule."
Readily available online for over two decades and still going strong.
1996-2017
The Mule abides.